Efficiency Station Knoxon Fic Edited

My name is Scott Rogers. I am recording this as one of five survivors of an attack, in the hopes that maybe, one day, someone will find this and the truth will come out. I lived on Trading Post [Garbled] with my wife and my six-year-old daughter. I, along with my brother and 12 other men and women, had built this station up from nothing nearly 20 years ago. As of last year, our population had doubled to 218 souls and almost 3.5 billion credits of goods were traded through our station ever month. With all our wealth and our prosperity, I should have expected that we would catch unwanted attention.

Nanotrasen, the massive corporate giant, quickly took notice of our small station. They offered huge sums of money for our station, and the trade routes connected to it. But they wouldn't let us stay if we sold... so naturally, we refused. But Nanotrasen does not take no for an answer. At first it was small; Nanotrasen declared an official embargo on our station, but that didn't stop the traders that came through. Then Nanotrasen began spreading rumors that we were a station of cannibals, who ate any trader who came through. That stopped a lot of traders, but enough still trusted us to make a profit. Soon it became apparent to Nanotrasen that they could not destroy us by ruining our reputation. So instead they decided to handle matters in a more personal manner.

Our only warning was a single incoming trading ship disappearing off the radar; within minutes, several Nanotrasen war frigates had surrounded the station. Dozens of Nanotrasen deathsquad soldier poured into our small outpost. We fought them with everything we had, both real weapons and makeshift ones. Even though one of the trading ships docked with the station had a load of weapons in their cargo, we couldn't hope to match up against trained soldiers with pulse rifles. After half a day of fighting only a small handful of residents remained, many of which were wounded. We retreated deep into the station’s maintenance shafts, hiding in dark storage rooms. The deathsquad was relentless; they hunted us down one by one, until we got lucky.

A group of survivors, myself included, ambushed and detained a lone soldier. We stripped him of his armor and weapons and dragged him to our medbay’s surgery room. I can’t say for sure what they did to him. I refused to watch... but I could still hear his screams. Nonetheless, when my comrades left the torture room, they left with a plan. The location of a small drop pod used to ferry soldiers to the station was revealed to us. It was supposed to be a simple task to run to the pod and leave the station.

We armed ourselves with the looted weapons from our victim and began a slow march to where the pod was said to have docked. As we moved through the station, I began to notice two things. The deathsquad soldiers were gone, and the station was filling with a strange purple gas. I don’t know what the gas was, but it filled my lungs with pain every time I breathed it in. We lucked out and found a cache of 02 tanks and gasmasks, but not before losing two men to the gas.

After what seemed like hours, we found the pod. As we began loading the pod with our wounded I heard a noise. Fire. The purple gas ignited immediately. A few of us managed to enter the pod and detach it, leaving those who could not reach it in time to burn. We had no other choice.

We docked at an intact hanger bay and are refilling our pod’s fuel cells now. Even as I am recording this, I can see and hear the fire raging in other parts of the station. I’m going to leave this recording device here; the fire  doesn't appear to be spreading to this area. I hope that this recorder survives. If we don’t make it out it will be the only testimony of what happened to my station. Maybe you are another survivor we missed; maybe you are one of the bastards that killed us off; or maybe... maybe my plan succeeded and you are one of millions listening to this. I just hope the truth gets out.

Wish us luck.